


Feel the Music

by JaceRMontague



Series: 30k in 30 days [3]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Deaf, Deaf Character, F/F, Fluff, Music
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-03
Updated: 2016-11-03
Packaged: 2018-08-28 22:12:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8464945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JaceRMontague/pseuds/JaceRMontague
Summary: Regina's new headphones arrive and she realises she can actually feel the bass. Emma, her deaf girlfriend, has never had the chance to just sit with music playing for hours on end. Until now.





	

Regina pulled the letter opener from her desk drawer and slid it along the edge of the parcel that had arrived that morning. Once she had got past the packing tape she tore open the package inside the box and unwrapped her new headphones, they were beautiful, a sleek white with a black slider on the left earpiece, a replacement for the basic matte black headphones she had broken the previous morning during her run.

She pulled them on, loving the feel of them; they were fast becoming her new favourite headphones, plugged them into her phone and turned them up as loud as they would go. After listening to a couple bars of the song she was listening to she remembered that there was a slider on one of the headphone pieces and pulled it up to see what it did.

‘’Woah” she whispered as she felt the bass vibrate through her head. The headphones vibrated. She could feel the music.

_Wait._

She pulled them off, careful not to snap the aux like she’d done on her last pair, and raced from her study on the ground floor, up the three flights of stairs to the balcony that Emma had said she would be reading on.

Regina stood for a moment, looking at her beautiful girlfriend, so happy that she could call Emma hers.

She stomped twice to get Emma’s attention. Emma took in how rushed Regina looked.

‘What’s the emergency?’ she signed. Even though she’d been able to speak since she was seven, she signed faster than she spoke and anyway, signing was natural to her, reacting to urgent situations required instinct instead of trying to get the words out of her mouth in order.

It’s not that she couldn’t. She could. She spoke more elegantly and eloquently than most when she wanted to. And, in situations where people didn’t understand signing, she would talk and lip read.

‘Nothing, nothing’ Regina replied, her fingers moving quickly. She’d secretly taught herself how to sign when the two of them were in high school. She’d wanted to be able to talk to Emma in the language the blonde was most comfortable. The first thing she’d signed was ‘I love you’. In the years since then she had become incredibly skilled at signing.

‘Then what’s the rush?’

‘I’ve got something for you.’ Regina sat on the seat opposite Emma, the headphones on her lap.

‘Oh really?’

‘Yep.’

Regina pushed the headphones towards her knees. Emma caught on to what Regina was saying and began laughing. Regina loved Emma’s laugh, it was beautiful and soft and sounded like music. Regina hated that Emma couldn’t hear her own laugh.

‘You are aware that I’m deaf?’

‘I didn’t learn to sign for nothing.’

‘So what am I going to do with headphones?’

‘Put them on, idiot.’

‘I’m deaf’ Emma signed frantically, still laughing at the absurdity of the situation.

‘I know. Put them on.’

‘Fine.’ Emma conceded and took the headphones. Regina stood up and sat behind Emma on the sun lounger. Emma leant into Regina’s body and sighed. She loved the feeling of someone literally having her back.

Regina’s hands snuck around to Emma’s front.

‘put them on’ She signed once more. Emma had become used to reading Regina’s signing as if she was signing herself, they often sat like this.

Emma nodded and slid the headphones over her head.

Regina opened her Spotify and scrolled through until she found the song she wanted – Sia’s the greatest; she and Emma had danced to it the night before when Regina had blasted the music that loud that Emma could feel the bass through the floor.

Emma felt Regina’s hair tickle her neck as Regina rested her head on Emma’s shoulder.

‘I swear. If this is just some ploy to- Emma started to sign. But was cut off when she felt it.

She felt the bass vibrate against the sides of her head.

‘Oh my god. Woah.’

Emma cupped her hands around the headphone pieces, feeling her bass against her hands.

‘This is incredible. I can’t believe this.’

Emma had the headphones so loud that Regina could hear the music clearly. They spent the day sitting on the sun lounger, Emma resting against Regina’s body, each experiencing the music in their own ways.

Eventually darkness fell and despite it being the middle of September, it was still warm out and so they stayed on the balcony in the dark, bass vibrating against Emma’s head and Regina’s chest from when they had lay down on the lounger, Emma lying on her side next to Regina with her head on the brunette’s chest. Regina tapped the beat of the songs onto Emma’s hip; a habit she had first gotten into when Emma had first gone dancing with Regina and wanted to know more of the songs than the bass she could feel.

‘Gi?’ Emma asked softly looking up at Regina, too comfortable with one hand holding the phone while one of Regina’s hands was tapping the melody of songs on her hipbone and their other hands interlaced to sign.

‘Yeah Em?’

‘Can I listen to one of your playlists? I know you make them all the time.’

Regina nodded and opened one of the playlists that she’d been working on.

‘It’s goes from not very bass-heavy to pure dancing barefooted at three am bass so I don’t know what’ll be like through the headphones.’

‘That’s okay. I just want to try.’

Regina nodded and pressed play on a playlist she had been working on _– Us._ – It was compiled of songs that reminded her of Emma, love songs and then the songs that she and Emma dance to, loud, bass filled songs with clear beats. The playlist was hours long, and they sat and held each other as it played.

They spent the night out on the balcony, holding one another close, looking at the stars making up their own constellations when they realised that neither of them could find the north star, feeling each other’s breathing, listening to and feeling the music. Every now and again Emma would ask for a line of lyrics to get a feel of what the song was about and instead Regina would stop tapping out melodies on Emma’s hip and would sign entire songs.

As the sun began to rise the phone’s battery finally died – Regina was amazed it had held out for so long.

Emma sat up with a yawn and slid the headphones off.

‘That was incredible.’

‘I’m glad you enjoyed it.’

‘Can we do it again?’ Emma signed, her expression alike to a puppy.

‘Of course we can. But right now? I need some sleep. I’ll charge the phone and when we wake up we can listen to more music, okay?’

Emma nodded and grinned, ‘okay.’

**Author's Note:**

> The headphones are Skullcandy Crushers. I have them myself and I love them.
> 
> I hope you're all good :)


End file.
